11 years ago..will this ever happen?

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Looks great in a sense, but to be honest I'm not really fond of lopsided grounds like St James' Park. Our Kop needs replacing with a better rake, bogs, refreshment facilities and a few thousand more seats (so we can have a more flexible ticket policy) providing we establish ourselves long term, in the Premier League,. As far as I'm concerned that is all we should be looking to do, but I wouldn't be in any hurry. However I believe that to increase corporate revenue, the South Stand development is a more attractive proposal for the club.
 
All that effort and they still have the portable TV in the corner.
 
From a purely selfish point of view I don't want it to happen. I love the South Stand as it is, and at the minute the Lane does have an intimate feel, and is the right size for us. It's all well and good increasing the capacity by a few thousand but what happens when we inevitably drop back to the Championship in a few years and our new found fans drift away.

The Lane is brilliant when there is a full capacity of 32k in, but is crap when there is 15k rattling round in there.
 
brownie said:
From a purely selfish point of view I don't want it to happen. I love the South Stand as it is, and at the minute the Lane does have an intimate feel, and is the right size for us. It's all well and good increasing the capacity by a few thousand but what happens when we inevitably drop back to the Championship in a few years and our new found fans drift away.

The Lane is brilliant when there is a full capacity of 32k in, but is crap when there is 15k rattling round in there.
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I think that’s a pessimistic view. I totally understand it given our past. But, as in life, your past doesn’t have to dictate your future. But it will, if you view it through the same lens. If you always do what you always did, you’ll get what you always had, if you’re lucky, at best.

We are in a multi-million/billion business. As things stand today we are a top 6 side in the best football league in the world. When we’ve done pinching ourselves we should consider for a moment what that could mean for the future?

I’m not for one moment suggesting we should overstretch ourselves, but we should be looking to take advantage of this and capitalise on it. These opportunities come along rarely and we are in a great situation.

More important than the stadium expansion is the globalisation of the club. Because most of our future funding will come from that, whether we like it or not. But making it possible for more fans, be they diehard or casual/neutral, to watch our games live has to be an important consideration.

I don’t see why a successful Sheffield United football club couldn’t fill a 50,000 stadium. In my time I have seen it. And that’s in a period when football wasn’t the big business it is now.

And I don’t think it is inevitable we drop down to the Championship again either.

Plan for success and there’s a chance you will get it.

As in life.
 
We’re getting sellouts for our games currently and we can increase the capacity of the south stand without having to reduce the capacity to do so.
We have long time ST holders from last season missing our due to demand and new fans unable to get tickets to games.
The South stand will increase the overall capacity while also increasing game revenues from boxes and currently our stock has never been higher from a commercial point of view.
The only reason for not doing it now can only be that the money is needed elsewhere and we don’t have sufficient funds to do everything at once but it has to be on a two year plan.
Not sure why we are destined to go back down but I can’t see why we’d go back to 15k as our core support has grown significantly since those days. We didn’t even dip that low in League one.
A 36-38,000 ground with significantly better corporate facilities seems a very sensible mid step with no down side. If we fill that for a couple of seasons then do the Kop.
Still love that picture of the ground and I like that the stands are distinctly different. It gives the stadium character.
 
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Lets be sensible about this and look at it from the point of view of the club wanting to generate extra income as soon as possible from any improvements.

Lets start with the kop, the current capacity is 10,221 with around 196 seats on each row.

Remove the seats from the back 10 rows (VV upwards) and extend back another 20 rows, making the rake steeper for the back 30 rows, make these 30 rows safe standing to increase capacity to 300 per row.

So with the current back 10 rows holding around 1960 and the extended capacity holding 9000 that’s an extra capacity of around 7040, At 400 quid ish for an ST that’s 2,816,000 extra income.

Bung a cantilever roof on top to get rid of the posts and a covered concourse under the new extension, and you have a business model that the club can live with.

Give us 3 years in the Prem then look at the South stand again.
 
It’s fine as it is. Everybody has had chance to get loyalty points, season tickets etc, yet we barely scrape over 30000 for the West Ham grudge match. All this rubbish about not getting season tickets for spurious reasons is twaddle, anybody not there for the West Ham game can fuck off, we have about 27000 genuine fans and that’s fine with me. You pays yer money and takes yer chance. It will never get that much better than this, and if you can’t be arsed to get down to Bramall Lane when the living is easy then you never will.
 
We are 6th in Prem + can't fill a 32k ground , despite STs having been at Championship prices last summer.
So these are just architect's pipe dreams.
The club has to buy the existing ground etc for £50m from McCabe + then fund transfers & wages.
Plus CW wants a new training facility.
Ground improvements , let alone extensions , are so far down the priority list , they are a not worth discussing.
 
Nothings happening until the ownership malarkey is finalised; Abdullah doesn't own the ground (yet).

Either way, cant see any movement on ground upgrades this year, even if/when we confirm staying up. Purely personal opinion, but think it would take a confirmed 3rd year to get the ball rolling. And I’m fine with that- short term, spend the money on keeping us there playing staff wise and upgrading the academy/training facilities (heard very positive stuff on that the other week from a good source).
 

Keen Blade said:
We are 6th in Prem + can't fill a 32k ground , despite STs having been at Championship prices last summer.
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ST sold out before going on normal sale, due to having to go hold a number back for sale and I don’t think the spare West Ham tickets which would have been restricted view only went on sale.
With current restriction are we actually offering 32,000 for sale on each game? I’m not sure we are and think if we had another 4-5,000 available we’d be averaging 34,000 rather than 30,000. They’ll always be 1,000 or so missing due to the pillars and other areas where tickets seem not to be put on sale.
 
I love it the way it is. Watching the match back last night you could tell carragher and neville loved our ground the way it is.
Everton are moving to a bigger better ground but it won't have a gwladys street .
 
My suggestion: sell out for more than 3 or 4 games in our first season in the PL for 10 years then maybe consider making a bigger ground. Until then try to sell out what we’ve got.
 
Let’s get settled in this league first
A top ten finish guarantees our club over 120 million pounds
We need to stabilise first , building the new south stand crippled the club first time around
I’m all for improving our club and in turn our city’s standing in the football world but let’s take it one step at a time Blades .
Let’s stay in this league and finally build a team for us all to support and be proud of
 
The South Stand extension should be done as a matter of priority. This is United's chance to establish ourselves as a perennial top tier club that, at worst, will attract big Championship backers if/when we next go down. The academy/training ground are absolutely essential to making the brand more attractive both locally, nationally and internationally. The South Stand extension will make us more attractive for none football events, and allow us to target all the floating support in the area, whilst providing top level facilities. Our ticketing policy will become more liberal and the facilities can provide for a different clientele. I can remember people saying we didn't need to waste money on the McCabe era stadium developments...
 
dublin 10 blade said:
Let’s get settled in this league first
A top ten finish guarantees our club over 120 million pounds
We need to stabilise first , building the new south stand crippled the club first time around
I’m all for improving our club and in turn our city’s standing in the football world but let’s take it one step at a time Blades .
Let’s stay in this league and finally build a team for us all to support and be proud of
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These 'let's get settled in the league first' and 'we need to stabilise first' bring their own dilemmas.

There's a time lapse between accepting 'we are settled and stabilised' and the work being completed.

At what point do we agree we are 'settled and stabilised'?

In 1975 we finished 6th (seemingly stabilised and settled) the south stand was completed and opened. The following season we were relegated and 6 years later found ourselves in division 4.

Chris Wilder and his team have made a commitment until 2024. He is our major asset and now is the time to start the work.

If all fails we can always let him go to another club, get compensation to help with the debt and in about 40 years time re-name the Shoreham end the Chris Wilder kop.
 
SwissBlade said:
Do the South Stand as soon as possible. Then knock down the kop and build a huge new stand with proper facilities.

We'll need a bigger ground to accommodate all the tourists for Champions League football
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I understand the sentiment but how can we knock down the kop when we have nowhere to put those fans? We can’t seriously consider reducing the capacity to under 25,000 for a season or two while it’s built.
 
Flatulent_Bob said:
I understand the sentiment but how can we knock down the kop when we have nowhere to put those fans? We can’t seriously consider reducing the capacity to under 25,000 for a season or two while it’s built.
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If the plan is to increase the South Stand capacity with a second tier, then that was the logic in doing that first. At least there would be somewhere for the fans to go
 
Normally I'd say yes it would be good to do this. Although given the amount of empty seats near me in the South Stand and Bramall Lane Upper then I think it maybe a waste of time.

I guess some matches are not worth attending this season.
 
bornablade said:
These 'let's get settled in the league first' and 'we need to stabilise first' bring their own dilemmas.

There's a time lapse between accepting 'we are settled and stabilised' and the work being completed.

At what point do we agree we are 'settled and stabilised'?

In 1975 we finished 6th (seemingly stabilised and settled) the south stand was completed and opened. The following season we were relegated and 6 years later found ourselves in division 4.

Chris Wilder and his team have made a commitment until 2024. He is our major asset and now is the time to start the work.

If all fails we can always let him go to another club, get compensation to help with the debt and in about 40 years time re-name the Shoreham end the Chris Wilder kop.
Click to expand...
And I followed the Blades from seeing the 3 sided ground to seeing the south stand go up ,
I think after next season , with close to a quarter of a billion pounds , with McCabe payed off , the prince in total charge , Sir Chris and Alan in charge for a minimum of 3 more years , we can then invest fully in our stadium/ team even more than last pre season in no way should our ground be allowed to turn into the death trap up the road ,
we are even now years ahead of the
“Dem Pigs 🐷 “ Stadium / Team and now press wise
if they get a points deduction I can see us for at least a decade pushing away even further , ending up like Trees v Notts county
I want our team / Club and City finally, to push on to the international prestige it deserves
But I don’t want it all to be put on Black then landing on red
And once Sir Chris and Alan are fully on board and informed all the way then I can see us only going forward
And even IF we go down they should still be left in charge
 

SwissBlade said:
If the plan is to increase the South Stand capacity with a second tier, then that was the logic in doing that first. At least there would be somewhere for the fans to go
Click to expand...
That could work it we got dispensation to significantly reduced the away allocation while it was built and put them in either the Kop or
Westfield corner. Not sure if that’s allowed though.
 
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